Arralis has developed another world first with the launch of fully integrated transmit and receive 94 GHz core chips at IMS2016. The devices make the highly desirable attenuation window of 94 GHz available for commercial applications such as fully autonomous radar for drones and self-driving vehicles as well as ‘wireless fiber’ communication speeds for 5G backhaul.
Speaking from San Francisco the company’s CTO, Mike Gleaves, welcomed the opportunity to showcase the unique products. “Our focus at Arralis is scale and integration which for our customers means easier system development and lower cost. These transmit and receive chips deliver both which is quite an achievement and further delivers on our promise to our customers that we would make our aerospace technology integrated and available for commercial applications”, said Gleaves. The devices are currently in the hands of Arralis’ lead customers with full commercial roll out in the coming months.
This release adds to Arralis’ family of W-band Millimetre-wave Monolithic Integrated Circuits (MMIC) devices. Traditionally 94 GHz has been used almost exclusively in the military radar market due high cost and difficulty of integration. 90-100 GHz is very attractive due to its ultra-small system size, high resolution and unique propagation (long range) features. Arralis’ technical and scale achievements enable this frequency to be used in a wide range of commercial applications including 5G, mega constellations, drones, driverless vehicles and the Internet of Things (IoT). In addition, Arralis manufactures complementary electronic beam forming and scanning antennas, including the use of metamaterials, further empowering their customers with unique technology solutions.
The MMIC’s are PHEMT GaAs devices that measure just 5.2 mm x 2.2mm. The chips’ function is an up-converter and a down-converter. This greatly simplifies system integration and widens market access at the center frequency of 94 GHz. The chips’ up-converter consists of a mixer with integrated medium power amplifier. It offers conversion gain, high image rejection and an output power of more than 13 dBm. The down-converter consists of a low noise amplifier and a mixer giving a noise figure of less than 5 dB and a gain of more than 10 dB.